abstract

We analyze the phase-matching properties of the monoclinic nonlinear crystal BiB3O6 (BIBO) for optical parametric amplification of femtosecond pulses when pumped near 800 nm by Ti:sapphire based laser systems. BIBO possesses higher figure of merit than β-BaB2O4 (BBO) and extremely large parametric gain bandwidth for collinear interaction. Experimentally, we compare type-II BIBO and BBO in a double pass optical parametric amplifier (OPA), pumping by amplified 80-fs pulses near 800 nm at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. The conversion efficiency obtained with BIBO is higher and a total energy output (signal + idler) of about 80 μJ is obtained in the plateau region of the tunability curve (1-3 μm) with an uncoated sample, for a total pump energy of 375 μJ. Shorter pulse durations were obtained with BIBO: e.g. 120 fs (FWHM) near 3 μm for the idler pulses. Substantial power scaling of such a femtosecond OPA is possible using a large aperture BIBO crystal in the second stage and we demonstrate a total energy output (signal + idler) exceeding 1 mJ, corresponding to an intrinsic conversion efficiency of ≈32% for the second stage, using a specially designed high-power Ti:sapphire pump system operating at 1 kHz. The tunability extends in this case from 1.1 to 2.9 μm. The high parametric gain and broad amplification bandwidth of type-I BIBO allow the maintenance of the pump pulse duration, leading to pulse lengths less than 140 fs, both for the signal and idler pulses, even at such high output levels.

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Shibboleth is an access management service that provides single sign-on to protected resources. It replaces the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.

Shibboleth is an access management service that provides single sign-on to protected resources. It replaces the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.

Shibboleth is an access management service that provides single sign-on to protected resources. It replaces the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.

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Shibboleth is access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. It replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.